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Stop developing this technology

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Re: Stop developing this technology

#291

Post by fsflover »

jevgeni wrote: post #134
atemerev wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well for me, crypto is highly moral and should be developed to prevent artificial trading restrictions and eliminate borders. There are many people who consider individual freedom to be of highest importance, and who are willing to develop any technology promoting it.

Most crypto is controlled by a few key players with even less oversight and accountability than the governments.

"Controlled" in your sentence doesn't mean the same as the one for the ordinary money.

Re: Stop developing this technology

#292

Post by scotty79 »

_djo_ wrote: post #276
alickz wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if I photoshop my crush's face onto a naked body? Wouldn't that be similar to having a personal deepfake? I agree with the person you're replying to, you can't stop people doing these things in the privacy of their own home and these deepfakes are functionally similar to other photo / video editing techniques. _Distributing_ those photoshops / deepfakes is another thing entirely though, and one I am fully agains…

The question wasn't whether people can be stopped from doing it, because for the most part they can't be, but whether it's moral. Or at least different in a moral sense from merely imagining someone else doing those actions. And yes, photoshopping your crush's face onto a naked body is just as unethical and immoral, even if done in the privacy of your own home, for the same reasons I mentioned above. Compared to deep…

Morality evolves with technology. At some point in the future even killing someone migh not be very immoral if technology reaches the point where we can back up and recover from back up.

Re: Stop developing this technology

#293

Post by lm28469 »

peyton wrote: post #248
LeanderK wrote: post #238

Again and again I am astonished that people without ethics exist, that they are confident in what they are doing and that they appear to be completely unable to reflect upon their actions. They just don't care and appear to be proud of it. If this is used to scam old people out of their belongings then you really have to question your actions and imho bear some responsibility. Was it worth it? Do the positive uses ou…

I can already fire off emails and text messages claiming to be whomever I want. I can even hire impersonators and lookalikes. I don’t get the big push against these newer technologies.

"I'll die at some point so why don't you stab me now"

Re: Stop developing this technology

#294

Post by JohnFen »

lovemenot wrote: post #77
jolmg wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The argument wasn't "Doing something bad is fine because others are", it's "You're trying to stop a bad thing happening by stopping some people upstream from doing something that's perfectly fine. That's going to be ineffective." But you're right about me not putting a lot of thought. I didn't think this would need more arguing than that. I still believe that tech is fundamentally neutral, and as such so is its devel…

There are others - not you - who will justify their own actions thusly: the technology existed, its better that the good guys (me - of course) should use it before the bad guys do. In the space between both equivocations (yours and the other guy's), lies the potential for moral abuse.

That's an even more faulty argument, though, because almost everyone considers themselves one of "the good guys".

Re: Stop developing this technology

#295

Post by JohnFen »

Buffout wrote: post #79
prox wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s simply that it’s a kids/teen level argument. “But they did it too!” Not a lot of thought went into it, is what it usually tells me.

This "kid level" argument fooled even Albert Einstein, Roosevelt, and many others. into developing atomic bomb. "If we don't build it Nazis will" Using it was achieved by different kid level argument "It will prevent even more death and suffering"

Absolutely correct. But that fact doesn't make these arguments acceptable.

Re: Stop developing this technology

#296

Post by JohnFen »

wincy wrote: post #218
jakelazaroff wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can we agree that “someone would have done this anyway” is a poor justification for one’s actions? That’s what you say when you 1) recognize that you did a bad thing, but 2) don’t want to be blamed for it.

If I can become rich instead of someone else, and the damage will be done either way, it seems perfectly rational if I can avoid any actual legal punishment (I don’t care about people on Twitter being angry with me, Twitter isn’t real life) to push the big red button and reap the rewards. Once I’m rich and powerful I can afford to be ethical, isn’t that the way of billionaires anyway?

If a person isn't ethical in the first place (as proven by becoming wealthy through unethical means), they certainly aren't going to become ethical after they're rich.

Re: Stop developing this technology

#297

Post by JohnFen »

entropi wrote: post #187
trashtester wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Basically prisoner's dilemma. I think the answer is inherent to the question of whether it's "justified", and the fact that you're being downvoted. If Prisoner's Dilemma is played once, the optimal strategy is to defect. If it's repeated an unknown number of times, the optimal strategy is tit-for-tat. Now, if you're an identifiable actor in a pool of tit-for-tat-players, and you have a history of defecting first, you…

> Basically prisoner's dilemma > (...)In that case, defecting will be seen as justifiable. Exactly! My argument basically boiled down to this. In certain situations, defecting may be the way to go. I would not blame the defector for doing what is in their best interest. And “someone would have done this anyway” could very well be what's turning a situation into a prisoner's dilemma, so it could actually be a valid ju…

> I would not blame the defector for doing what is in their best interest.

I absolutely would. The defector is willingly harming unconsenting others. That the harm would have been caused by someone else anyway doesn't suddenly make it OK.

Re: Stop developing this technology

#298

Post by datpiff »

alickz wrote: post #273
_djo_ wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's a fundamentally different thing, morally speaking. Imagination is fleeting, ephemeral, jumbled, and usually linked to a specific state of mind that passes once the person has either grown bored of the imagination of achieved whatever satisfaction they wanted from it. A deep fake image or video is persistent on your device and may leak some day, but worse is that feels real in a way mere imagination never…

What if I photoshop my crush's face onto a naked body? Wouldn't that be similar to having a personal deepfake? I agree with the person you're replying to, you can't stop people doing these things in the privacy of their own home and these deepfakes are functionally similar to other photo / video editing techniques. _Distributing_ those photoshops / deepfakes is another thing entirely though, and one I am fully agains…

> What if I photoshop my crush's face onto a naked body? Wouldn't that be similar to having a personal deepfake?

Yes, and it's already widely considered to be really fucking weird behavior

Re: Stop developing this technology

#299

Post by lm28469 »

bigDinosaur wrote: post #39
yipbub wrote: post #11

I'm convinced that this idea that technology is completely neutral is wrong. It is not neutral in the face of human psychology. The human species is a different animal that the human individual, and it is powerful, but does not make truly conscious decisions. Once you let the genie out of the bottle, a wish will be made. A technology might not be inherently bad, but neither are knives, and we don't leave those lying…

'Technology is neutral' is simply a banal observation that technology is only ever used by humans who can decide what to do with it. It's not saying that a new technology doesn't enable new and terrible human choices, simply that those choices rest with the people, not the technology itself. Knives seem like the perfect example, really. We do leave them lying around in our drawers, usually under zero real security ag…

> Knives seem like the perfect example, really. We do leave them lying around in our drawers, usually under zero real security against any malicious guest, but we recognise it is about the choices of the people we invite into our houses, not the existence of the knives themselves, that is the real danger.

The problem comes from the scale, it is a knife vs nuke question, but you seem to stop a bit too short in your reasoning. Yes both can kill, they just don't operate on the same scale.

You could forge documents 400 years ago, it doesn't mean it would be ethical to release a software that let you forge any document at scale instantly and for free in a single click

One steam engine is a marvel, 1.4B ICE cars on earth is a nightmare

It's always about scale, almost never about the original purpose/intent of the tech. Modern tech develops and spread infinitely faster than anything from even 20 years ago

Re: Stop developing this technology

#300

Post by _djo_ »

scotty79 wrote: post #292
_djo_ wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The question wasn't whether people can be stopped from doing it, because for the most part they can't be, but whether it's moral. Or at least different in a moral sense from merely imagining someone else doing those actions. And yes, photoshopping your crush's face onto a naked body is just as unethical and immoral, even if done in the privacy of your own home, for the same reasons I mentioned above. Compared to deep…

Morality evolves with technology. At some point in the future even killing someone migh not be very immoral if technology reaches the point where we can back up and recover from back up.

Maybe, but what’s the relevance? We can’t predict that, nor can we adjust today’s morality to match what technology might enable in future.

Perhaps murder will one day be not very immoral, but that doesn’t mean we should treat it any differently today.

Right now, creating fake naked pictures and videos of real and non-consenting people is immoral. In some jurisdictions it’s illegal. It’s also probably harmful, by taking obsessions further than mere imagination would allow.

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